Yoga

Definition

In Vedic astrology a yoga is a particular, defined combination of planets held to produce a definite result — fortunate or unfortunate — not just any chance grouping. As Raman puts it, every yoga is a combination, but not every combination is a yoga: only those raised to the dignity of a yoga, ones that point to specific traits, wealth, fortune or misfortune. Yogas form three broad ways — between planets and other planets, between planets and rasis (the signs), and between planets and bhavas (the houses). Thousands appear across the Sanskrit classics.

In Tradition

Across the classical and modern Jyotish literature, a yoga is read as a defined planetary combination that promises a specific result — and that promise is felt mainly during the dasas, the planetary periods, of the planets that form it. It comes through fully only when those planets are strong and unafflicted. Several sources tie a yoga's strength to the dignity, lordship and overall condition of the planets that make it up.

In Practice

A jyotishi (Vedic astrologer) finds the yogas in a chart and treats them as the backbone of a prediction, weighing each one by the dignity, lordship, placement and combustion of the planets that form it, and timing its result to those planets' dasa periods. Bhagat sorts yogas by what forms them — the ascendant and its lord, the Sun, the Moon, positions by sign or house, exaltation or own sign, and exchanges between house-lords. Many carry names: the Guru-Mangala yoga (Jupiter with Mars, favouring status and leadership); the Chandra or lunar yogas, built around a prominent Moon (Adhi, Sunapha, Anapha, Durudhara and more — which Parashara says give their results ahead of other yogas); the Variegated yogas tied to the lagna (ascendant) or Moon; and harsher ones like the Shoola yoga, where malefics sit only in the kendras (the angular houses). The planet that delivers a yoga's result is its yogakaraka.

Historical Origin

The concept is native to Hindu astrology, where thousands of yogas are set down in the original Sanskrit works, including teachings ascribed to the sage Parashara. Modern authors writing in English carry it forward — Raman (in Three Hundred Important Combinations, Hindu Predictive Astrology, and his translation of the Bhavartha Ratnakara), along with Charak, Narasimha Rao, Bhagat, Levacy, Frawley and Sutton — adapting the ancient dicta to a modern context.

Further Reading

• Raman, Three Hundred Important Combinations
• Frawley, The Astrology of the Seers
• Levacy, Beneath a Vedic Sky
• Raman, Bhavartha Ratnakara
• Charak, Elements of Vedic Astrology
• Sutton, The Essentials of Vedic Astrology
• Raman, Hindu Predictive Astrology
• Raman, Notable Horoscopes
• Bhagat, Sure Shot of Vedic Astrology
• Narasimha Rao, Vedic Astrology - An Integrated Approach
• Charak, Yogas in Astrology
• Rao, Yogis, Destiny and the Wheel of Time